“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’” (Luke 12:20, NIV)
Like many of you, I have in the past week become aware of a golfer I never knew. I will not, sadly, have the chance to meet her now.
Celia Barquin Arozamena once kissed countryman Sergio Garcia on the cheek when she was a little girl. The photo is dear, making its way to social media in those first hours after we heard that Ms. Barquin Arozamena, completing her degree at Iowa State University after a stellar playing career that included a Big 12 individual title this spring, had been assaulted and murdered alone on a golf course.
European Ryder Cupper Tommy Fleetwood asked one of the more poignant questions after hearing the news: “I’ve always grown up thinking a golf course is the safest place you can be. Where is safe these days??”
We can only do one most important thing in our lives: monitor our souls.Where, we might ask, has safe ever been? Only one generation into humanity, the older brother killed the younger—just the two of them in an open field. No matter where, no matter when, we might call our existence a life-and-death situation.
Two Tuesdays ago, I lay on an operating table while doctors sliced my neck and cut their way through to provide new strength to my vocal cords. No tumor this time, but it was the fourth cancer-connected surgery I’ve had in less than three years. Each time my wife has sat for hours in a waiting room, patient and strong, but fully aware that not everyone who goes into surgery comes out. She is a post-op nurse herself.
Life and death. There are places we probably never consider it. Like a golf course. There are places we most certainly do. Like a hospital.
Where are you breathing out your days of late? In a place of life, or a place of death? The truth is we all live in both. The same volume of Scripture that tells us we are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10) records Jesus’ telling of a parable where a rich man, happy and boastful in his possessions, suddenly finds himself standing before God, his life puffed out in an evening.
If our lives must be lived this way, with an awareness that our body is not made to withstand murderous forces from within or without, then we can only do one most important thing in our lives: monitor our souls.
I wrote at the outset that I will not have a chance to meet Celia Barquin Arozamena. I really do not know. Perhaps she did that one thing. Perhaps she is with God, having given her soul to him. I pray it is so. But my words would be incomplete if I did not say here, while I still can, that I do want to meet you for sure. I do want to see you in eternity and praise Jesus together with you.
—
Jeff Hopper
September 25, 2018
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The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.